


A Funny Thing Happened On the Way to the Station

by orphan_account



Category: Final Fantasy VII
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-08
Updated: 2014-09-08
Packaged: 2018-02-17 02:24:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,388
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2293505
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A day in the life of the Sector 7 Railway Guard involves coffee, a Turk, more coffee, a bar maid, and a curious old man who shouts statistics in his sleep.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Funny Thing Happened On the Way to the Station

**Author's Note:**

  * For [FFlove190](https://archiveofourown.org/users/FFlove190/gifts).



> Thanks to the Shinra Executive Exchange for this awesome prompt! I'm so, so sorry that it is so late, but I hope that you enjoy it all the same.
> 
> Based on the prompt:  
> What does this guy see and do on a daily basis at the station? The day to day happenings at the sector 7 station through the eyes of everyone's favorite guard!
> 
> Does he merely watch for suspicious people coming in and out of the train? Does he watch the people and quietly make fun of the clothes they wear? Do people talk to him a lot - the regulars who come and go? Who are these regulars - normal peeps, SOLDIER, Turk, AVALANCHE, even executives? Does anyone ever notice his presence? Does he run petty criminals down? Does he just stand there and let crime happen or does he keep the platform as safe and clear as he can, or does he only do that when he knows important people are coming down on the train?

When he arrives at the Sector Seven station on the morning of his twenty-fifth anniversary as Station Master, Brand Valhe has a hunch. He’s never been an intuitive kind of guy, but somewhere between losing his baby fat and gaining his beer belly he’s managed to learn a few things. He knows that the moment you most need a break is the moment the universe will decide it wants to shit all over you. He knows this intimately, has seen the truth of it on the faces of thousands of passengers over decades of professional people watching. He’s also learned that there are only two kinds of people in the world: the ones that screw you over on accident, and the ones that do it on purpose. No one is truly harmless, not in the slums and not up on the plates. He’s seen kids picking pockets, grannies hustling teenagers, and every race and creed holding each other up for cash. He and his patrols put a stop to most of the robberies, but there’s not much that can be done for the rest.

His job is to stand on the platform and watch as the whole range of human experience passes by, if not to help, then at least to witness.

Every day brings something new here, so on his anniversary he doesn't expect sunshine and roses. He arrives just after sunrise, not that anyone can tell through the smog, and the platform is relatively calm. A mother and child are peddling scrap by the ticket counter, where the new cashier stands watching them like he’s got something unspeakable stuck up his ass. A wave and a smile go a long way toward making the guy relax, and Brand decides to let squatters lie, regulations be damned. Everybody has to eat, and that kid looks pretty thin.

He makes his way up the stairs to the platform where the seven o'clock chum bucket sputters away on the tracks, growing more crowded as passengers shove each other inside. Rahlna, the gysahl addict, sits on her usual perch between the office and what’s left of the old train graveyard. She waves at him with her smoking hand like it isn’t his job to arrest her for possession, and goes right back to puffing out more smoke than the damn engine. One of these days he’s going to get her help, but the weed smell does wonders for the station’s rat problem, so he keeps putting it off.

When he gets to the office, Alle’s coffee cart is waiting by the door as usual. He tips her five gil for his daily cup of sludge, and pretends it tastes good for her sake. Even though the trains are running inexplicably on schedule and all the actually dangerous types seem to have fucked off to ruin someone else’s day, he can’t help checking his ammo belt when he gets in the station office. Call it paranoia, but after two wars, a corporate take-over, two rounds of leather obsessed terrorists, and whatever the hell you call the planet itself fighting a genetically modified alien, he’s learned to take things cautiously.

Turns out his hunch is completely warranted. He gets an unwelcome visitor not twenty minutes after clocking in, just as he’s donning his red overcoat to go on rounds. It’s one of the Turks, which he thought had been disbanded after that last batch of terrorists, but clearly still exist if her suit and tie get-up are anything to go by. Under her razor cut blonde hair she wears a scrunched up expression like she’s just smelled something foul, and jet black heels that emit rhythmic clicks with every step. She helps herself to his desk chair like there’s nothing unusual going on here, and before he can even think to speak she does it for him, calling orders to a pair of armored goons who stomp in after her.

“Lieutenant, you’re on comms, get me Tseng. Corporal, I want maps, schedules, and personnel.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And no Junon firedrills.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Sorry,” he interrupts, “but this is a private office, you can’t be here.”

“Oh, the Station Master, excellent. Here.”

Abruptly she’s out of his chair and thrusting a yellow envelope in his face, and he’s struck dumb by the realization that this woman is taller than him. She’s slim and focused, and her suit fits her in a way that makes his standard issue uniform feel frumpy. Sheepishly he takes the envelope but doesn’t open it, as his eyes are busy watching the pandemonium of her bodyguards digging around in his cabinets.

“I’m commandeering your station until the termination of our operation, which I estimate to be between fourteen hundred and eighteen hundred hours. Until such time, we strongly recommend you leave the premises and enjoy this pay bonus, compliments of the Shinra Department of Public Safety.” The woman says, indicating the envelope.  It feels thick, compressing slightly between his fingers as only stacks of greenbacks do.

Well shit.

“What exactly is the problem?” he hears himself ask. It’s idiotic, questioning a Turk, but there it is.

“I believe I told you to leave.”

“Actually, you recommended it.”

“It’s a turn of speech. Leave.”

“Now see here, I’ve spent half my life in this station, and there isn’t anybody—“

“Lieutenant! Escort this man—“

“Who are you after? I know every crook from Sectors Five to Seven, and half of them are the only reason this city’s still standing.”

Apparently, “Lieutenant” is the bigger of the two interchangeable cronies, and “Lieutenant” has exactly zero trouble holding Brand up by the armpits. Charming boy, that Lieutenant. Brand’s just caught up with where this conversation has gone when his feet lift off the floor and the bullet that’s been lodged in his right shoulder since the AVALANCHE attack suddenly feels new. He sincerely hopes his cry of pain is suitably stoic and manly, because he can hardly tell over the sensation of adrenaline flooding his veins.

The next thing he knows, he’s knocking back a potion on the bench outside the office and the Turk is attempting to finish a cup of Alle’s swill without pulling faces. Turns out she’s hunting a gang lord known only as The Sleeping Old Man. It’s a pretty dumb code name if you ask him, but he’s admittedly a bit of a criminal connoisseur. Apparently the guy knows all kinds of stuff he shouldn't and likes to shout about it to anybody who asks; a resource and a security risk in one presumably narcoleptic package. Brand honestly hasn't heard of him, but he knows enough about the Midgar railways to be useful, so here he is swapping trade secrets with the most special of Special Forces. Apparently the crook's got an inter-sector ticket, and they've got every station in the city wired up like the Golden Saucer looking for him.  Well, every station except Sector Seven, thanks to his pig-headed interference.

So the Turk and her friends do what they came to do and Brand goes about his business. He checks the engines and keeps the peace, and mid-morning has him running the herd of child scam artists off the tracks when they come looking for handouts.  He keeps his head down and generally tries to ignore the completely un-imaginary feeling of being watched. By the time he drops into the little café by the post office, he’s starting to think the Sleeping Old Man decided to take the day off. They've had no hits anywhere in the city, so he feels relatively comfortable celebrating his anniversary with a long lunch.

The Café Out Late isn't anything special, but they have good food and good beer and they've managed to keep it free of those blasted televisions. It could do with a few dozen coats of paint, but Midgar's made ugly a way of life since the first reactor sprang up, so why stop now?

He’s just finishing his entrée when he hears the barmaid having a fit across the room and grudgingly heeds the call of duty. She’s a buxom brunette with a belligerent personality, so he’s not expecting anything more unusual than a teenage jar-head getting fresh. Boy is he wrong.

“Bust 43… Waist 34… Hip 38… Zzzzzz… Zzz…”

Dozing on a stool sits a bearded old man in worn miner’s duds, out cold on the bar top with a drink in hand. He's got a face like a pick ax and drool dripping down his chin like some grotesque spit fountain. Nellie's hollering at him like he isn't dead to the world, and Brand wonders what the hell she's smoking until the old bastard starts mumbling in his sleep.  

“You've already had sex three hundred and thirty-four times… Zzz…”

Nellie slaps him full in the face, good on her, and the man starts awake looking like a goddamn angel. He lets out an apology that sounds rehearsed and makes the perfectly contrite face of a man who's used to being guilty.

Well, he can get in line. Nellie looks fit to murder, so he gets the man by the elbow and takes him straight out the back, babbling all the way. By the time they arrive on the platform he’s declared Brand's aborted military service, his collection of obscure fossils, and some honestly stunning statistics about his time as Station Master. He tolerates the nonsense until the geezer's declarations take a decidedly sexual turn, which is officially his limit.

“All right, geezer, how the hell do you know all this crap?”

“Eh? Ain't you ever heard o’ ORACLE?”

“Frankly, no. Is that some new kind of materia?”

“Oh, no! No, no, it was an experiment! Meant to see the future, see? So sorry, sir, can’t help what I say in my sleep. See, I have a condition. Three hundred twenty-eight missed dates," he says in a sing-song tone.

“Oh no, don’t tell me it was another mako—“

“A mako experiment, yes, sir. All night, every night, still can’t sleep right. Six years…oh the humanity..."

Brand honestly liked the guy a lot more when he was sleeping.  Then he'd just been another dirty old pervert, but now Brand feels sorry for the poor bastard even as he escorts him into the waiting arms of Shinra’s finest. Mother knows they've all suffered enough for Shinra’s mistakes, and many like him have spent their whole lives just trying to make things better. But for every good deed there's a million bad ones waiting for penance.  What would Shinra do with this guy when they finally got him?  Certainly they aren't planning anything good, not for this guy, who clearly knows tons of confidential shit.

“Well, I guess I’ll be on my way. I won this here ticket in the lottery, you see. Yes’sir, I’m off to live off the land like the good ‘ole days.”

“Oh hell, don’t do that.  Here, take an airship.”

Like a bleeding-heart old fool, Brand hands the guy his golden envelope. Everything inside him screams that this could be a con, but he's seen what mako does to people. He's seen everything from super soldiers to geostigma and all of it is just a giant heap of tragedy. Just a crowd of people who never had a chance to leave the past behind because it's living right under their skin and glowing in their irradiated eyes. It's the least he can do after serving the executor of this man's torture. 

“Here, I don’t need it. Just take it and get the hell out of this rust bucket.”

The man opens the envelope and glows. Stupidly, it feels like the best thing he’s done for anyone in a long ass time. Sweet mother Gaia, the poor bastard’s hands are shaking, he’s so spooked.

“T-Thank you.”

“Get outta here. Turks are lurking.”

And in a blur of white bearded jubilation, he’s gone, a speck of positive energy lost in the dirty masses of the world’s grimmest metropolis.

At first, he feels like a goddamn hero, but each step toward the station office feels like iron creeping up his legs. Shinra is everywhere, it knows everything, and it’s going to find out what he’s just done. It’s a good thing he made it to the big twenty-five today because he may well disappear tomorrow.

Even so, he walks his death march with pride, past what’s-his-name at ticketing and Alle, preparing for the afternoon rush. He waves at Rahlna, who is refreshingly smoke-free, and vows to get her into some kind of program if he lives through the night. The mother-son peddling duo seems to have relocated outside the office, perhaps run out by the ticket cashier, and he doesn't waste a moment before emptying his wallet into the little wooden box that serves as their register. He’s never been married, has no one that might need the money, so why the hell not.

Looking around the station, he takes in the tiny world that has been his domain.  It boasts a permanent population of about five, and a daily influx of hundreds, all of whom manage to co-exist without doing permanent damage to themselves or others. He supposes that’s an accomplishment.

It’s just a stone platform that people walk over and back, a few short seconds out of each day that became Brand’s entire life. He stands guard until sunset, when exhausted workers of all types come rushing in, anxious to get home. Anxious to see someone, to eat something, to go somewhere that will push all the suffering of the past back until it is just a shadow of a memory. They are fathers and cousins and criminals and daughters and addicts and saints, and as they swarm toward the next day of their lives they all become, in Brand’s eyes, a single being.  He's not one of them, standing at attention here in this funny little section of the world while everyone else moves through, but abruptly it feels like a privilege rather than a duty. Perhaps he’s never been a part of it, but he knows what the Lifestream looks like, has unwittingly watched it flow for twenty-five years.

Satisfied and blessedly content for the first time in his life, Brand approaches the office and opens the door.

  
It is empty.


End file.
